Slashdot Mirror
The Life of a Spammer
An anonymous reader writes "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran an interesting article today about the life of a "small time" spammer. It is interesting to note that even a religiously zealous grandmother can mire our inboxes with junk." That's Flo Fox, of Slidell, LA.
Innate respect for the elderly clashing with innate disgust for people selling me ways to naturally enlarge my cock! AAARGH!!! THE CONFUSION!
I'm amazing. You aren't. SUCK IT
My home town is on slashdot!
Oh, great, it's about a spammer.
Crap.
It's the fact your product and actions are not wanted.
Simple capitalism- Sell a product people want in a manner people want it and you will make money. Spam does neither as such will eventually die out.
I love Flo's t-shirt! WWJD? Ask if you need a bigger rod and staff, and yea, only He can granteth THAT miracle!
Yes. And we should blame knife makers because they made a weapon that was used in a brutal stabbing, or a gun-maker maker for a brutal shooting, and the DMCA is a perfectly justified law.
Of course that's proposterous. The tool is not the crime. Sociopathy and lack of social responsibility knows no limits or bounds, and self-justification for such behavior is limited only by the imagination. Little old ladies who go to church and feed the homeless can have areas of social irresponsibility as well.
I know that one of my grandmothers, who is one of those little old ladies who goes to church and feeds the homeless, just happens to be racist. Does that make racism justifiable?
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Unfortunately this this reflects badly upon the truly religious people. All I can say is that I hope her church finds out and kicks her sorry ass out of it, I'd do it if she were in mine.
Needle Nardle Noo
It is interesting to note that even a religiously zealous [...]
Even? I suggest that's precisely the kind of mental handicap ("disconnect" if you want to be nicer) that's required.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
If there are any Slashdot readers in that area, perhaps someone should double check that that this is the person in question. (Does the person living there look like the woman in the article?).
We don't want to give grief to an innocent person.
For the end user like me, its probably not all that bothersome. I have a spamassassin / bogofilter rig built into my evolution filters that takes care of most everything.
Now how about the sysadmin reading slashdot. The one that maintains that mailserver and has to find storage for all of that crap that comes pouring in. The one that has to setup spamassassin on the servers and teach people (which is probably the worst part) how to setup their outlook clients to filter all of this. The one that has to hear complaints about the 2-3 spam getting through over the 3 trillion that came in during the week and the one that has to requistition the money to maintain the spamfiltration instead of it going elsewhere in the company.
Spam costs the ISP/Company/User time and money whereas the spammer pays next to nothing and most slashdotters (IMHO) have a problem with that.
tip - if you have a scoring system like spamassassin, set two thresholds. One which sends mail to the spam box, and a second, higher one which sends to /dev/null
:)
On my system, (spapassassin + spamass-milter) I file at 6, and reject mail at 14
I waited a while to ensure that the bayes was tuned properly before adding the reject rule, but if I didn't have it my mail'd be totally unusable...
If you don't have a scoring system, get one
You know, I've been thinking a bit. Spam is becoming a real problem and it's only a matter of time before email itself becomes nearly useless due to the massive amounts of spam. Something has to be done and it has to be done soon in order for it to still be effective enough. Stopping spam itself when it's en-route is not an option, as it will only lead to an arms race between spammer/virus writers and hackers/AV corps. Killing the bandwidth of the computers that send spam isn't an option either as it involves (D)DoSing, which is rather illegal. Killing the spammers themselves, as satisfying and tempting as it may be, is not an option either. Remember, even a spammer is someone's father/mother and/or son/daughter.
Maybe, MAYBE we have a chance by sicking the BSA on them. Yes, the Business Software Alliance, the same people who use some sort of legalized extortion and raid small businesses that "fail to comply" to their rather variable demands. Think about it, most small time spammers are technological idiots who use home computers. Do you really think every spammer who has 10 PCs churning out email has valid licenses for Windows? Maybe a few, but loads don't. And even if they do, MS licensing is so horrid that whatever the heck you did, you're bound to violate at least 3 licenses anyways, excluding other licenses like the spam software itself. This is how we might go after a few small-time spammers. And hey, it actually makes the BSA people do something useful as well! Maybe an idea?
Hate me!
1. Spam. ...
2. Agree to a newspaper interview identifying you as a spammer.
3. Forget that your address and phone number is listed publicly.
7. PROFIT!
So now we have an AARP member spamming. Does it make any difference to me? It doesn't matter if the theif is a grandma wearing a WWJD T-shirt or a young fella with a ski mask. Theft is theft, and a thief is a thief.
Whats she say to defend her theft - things like "....This (spam) lets the little guy compete". What does she think about the time, energy and costs small providers have to dish out to defend their network against SPAM? How many small guys have had their machines shut down because of false return addresses, or an onslaught of spam that makes mail services crawl? What about those small guys BUZZZZ Wrong answer grandma!
She doesn't stop there, she goes on to say the even more bizzare "When I defend what we do, I talk about free speech". I looked at the constitution to be sure and nowhere did it say "You may steal from others, and then force them to accept your speech into their homes". I believe the consitution protects speech, but doesn't force others to have to accept/listen to ones speech. The amendment is about government cesorship, NOT about theft of services to promote a get rich schemes. BUZZZZ Wrong answer grandma!
So she makes 2000 - 4000 / week. After several years of college I don't make 4k a week, but then again, even if I could improve my economic situation, my personal moral compass wouldn't allow me to what she does. Perhaps she needs to read the bible more. What was it again?? Thou shall not steal?? Thou shall not bear false witness?? - Stuff like that.
With 80% or more of all e-mail being spam, the signal to noise ratio is heading south fast. To stop spam you have to stop spammers.
Here is the towns website
http://www.slidell.la.us
Now can any one let me know which provider provides this type of person with access? I have some IP blocks to add to my blacklist.
According to information -
Flo Fox - Slidell LA
985 646 2225
I don't know if that number is correct - but it's publically listed.
AngryPeopleRule
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
That's a good idea, actually. Then publish the site with those tech support sweatshops (Convergys, et. al.) so that when the workers there get calls from people who are mad about spam, they can say "If you go to www.spammer-info.com, you can call them and tell them personally what you think about them..."
Of course then you have the problem of innocent people getting on the list... and anyone who says "hurting one innocent person is worth it!" just joined the ranks of spammers as far as moral decay goes, imho.
--- 11 meters/second, or 24 miles per hour - the airspeed velocity of an unladen European swallow. Really.
Since I've been admining mail servers since 1992, here is what I can tell you.
1. The amount of spam has increased dramatically, and the amount of computing horsepower required to run a mail server has increased as well.
2. Currently we routinely refuse connections from more than 75% of all computers that ATTEMPT an SMTP connection - private open relay block lists. If we didn't do that, double the amount of disk space and computing horsepower required to continue
3. We loose customers when spam assassin doesn't keep up with spammers. They move to Earthlink and other providers that have more money to throw at the problem
4. A server with a common domain name associated with it, that has about ONLY 40 legitimate accounts on it routinely gets more than 100,000 connection attempts every day.
Filtering costs money, CPU disk space and adds expense and complexity to a very simple protocol. The amount of spam is such that some companies have stopped getting mail at their primary domain all together. This is becoming an option exercised more and more. Spam is stopping companies from posting contact information on their website, and pornographic spam, even filtered, makes getting a child an e-mail account risky unless you personally approve every message.
In the end, it's time, money, time and money time and money that the provider spends, that could be used to bring the cost of yoru internet service down, instead of inflating it.
AngryPeopleRule
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
Whoops, let me elaborate. That's the wrong Florence Fox. My fiance went to the same church (St. Genevive) as her and knew her as the bandana lady. Apparently she needed the bandana to help with her migraines.
She is listed at the following address:
Fox, Florence F
1711 W Hall Ave
Slidell, LA 70460-2536
(985) 781-2542
(985) 643-9417
A1 E Services is Bruce Connelly and Flo Fox aka Mrs. Bruce Connelly.
& rq sdta=34331685D
A1E_Services (NETBLK-BRW-5021-A1ESERVICES)
1711 West Hall Ave
Slidell, LA 70460
US
Netname: BRW-5021-A1ESERVICES
Netblock: 67.96.78.0 - 67.96.79.255
Coordinator:
Hostmaster (ZB13-ARIN) hostmaster@broadwing.com
512-427-3700
Domain System inverse mapping provided by:
NS3.BROADWING.NET 216.140.16.252
NS4.BROADWING.NET 216.140.17.252
Connelly, Bruce (BC891-ARIN) a1esupport@aol.com
A1E SERVICES
1711 W Hall Avenue
Slidell, LA 70460
(504) 649 - 6248
http://www.sec.state.la.us/cgibin?rqstyp=crpdtl
34331685D
Name: FOXC, INC.
Type Entity: Business Corporation
Status: Active
Domicile Address: 1711 WEST HALL AVENUE, SLIDELL, LA 70460
Incorporated: 05/19/1989 | Effective: 05/17/1989
Registered Agent (Appointed 5/19/1989): FLORENCE F. FOX, 1711 WEST
HALL AVENUE, SLIDELL, LA 70460
Officer(s)/Director(s): FLORENCE F. FOX | CAROLYN J. FREDERICK |
BRUCE
D. CONNELLY
Incorporator(s): FLORENCE F. FOX
SMTP was designed to be a robust mail protocol in an environment in which trust was perfectly reasonable. The environment changed, the protocol was retained. Fine - but then you have to do something about the lost appropriateness of trust. Some things have been done - they've been inadequate. That's not the fault of SMTP or of the designers.
It isn't just SMTP that is abused: open proxy abuse is a big contributor to the spam problem. There, again, trust is inappropriate - but still exists. Spammers take advantage of other system and human vulnerabilities to set up spam zombie servers. Too much inappropriate trust yet again.
Some basic human behavior needs to change - and the ISPs should be in the lead. They aren't. The security experts might be in the lead. They aren't. Many security experts appear to believe that securing a small fraction of systems and bitching about all the rest is adeqaute. Well, take a look - is it? Few security experts do anything towards identifying and stopping the abusers who constantly search the internet for vulnerabilites. It's like a city is plagued by burglars and the security experts simply make sure the doors and windows of their buildings can't be forced. They could put in cameras to get pictures of the burglars when they try the window - but instead merely complain about those who don't secure their windows. Of course in this case it's spam, not burglary, and the abuse commited on the other guy's system can hit the security experts own system, in the form of spam. If the security expert would help rid the community of the abusers then the abuse would be reduced. The security expert would rather point fingers at others and hurl blame than do what he himself could do beyond excluding just one form of abuse. Some expert - he doesn't even look to see how allowing the abusers to continue hurts him.
Who is better placed than an ISP to watch for attempted proxy port abuse? What ISP do you know of that watches? Recent actual experience by someone who did watch showed that many spammers commit the abuse form their own IPs. Watch for the abuse and you find the spammers' IPs (so much for the much-vaunted "anonymity" of the spammers.) The spammers aren't that particularly clever: it's mostly that those who could act don't.
Fox might not send any XXX spam. What she did is not condemned by the church.
Sure it is! Do Unto Others.
She sends a million spams. She knows that it costs her nearly nothing and that the recipient is therefore paying to receive it. By her own stated understanding of response rate, she's making millions of people pay for something they don't want.
Is that doing unto others?
Not in my books.
Therefore, it *is* condemned by the church, and it demonstrates her hypocrisy.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
I can't believe this goes on in every spam story without anyone having the shred of maturity it takes to say "this is wrong". Physically assaulting other people is wrong. I don't care if they're spammers. I don't care if they're child molesters or genocidal dictators. We're living in the year 2003, and we've seen what happens when we use violence as a solution to our problems. We've built countries with laws and courts and all that other good stuff so we wouldn't feel a need to engage in such vigilante barbarism. Everyone deserves a fair trial and a fair punishment. If you don't like what someone does, work to change it but work under the rule of law. Don't encourage people to beat up other people. It's not civilized.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.